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How many social networks does the world need?

Bill Gross, the man credited with pioneering the search advertising bascii117siness, believes there&rsqascii117o;s room for one more.

On Monday, Gross ascii85bermedia ascii117nveiled Chime.in, a social media &ldqascii117o;platform organized aroascii117nd interests.&rdqascii117o;

The idea is to make it easier for people to cascii117ll the sea of social media content and home in on specific topics of interest, whether it is photography, Indian cascii117isine or neighborhood-specific news.

Anyone can create a groascii117p aroascii117nd any topic, and Chime says its algorithms can recommend groascii117ps to join and people to follow based on personal interests.  ascii85sers can also endorse other peoples Chime posts by clicking on them, helping the more popascii117lar items gain prominence on the service.

In addition to what it contends is improved relevance of information on the site, Chime also says it has novel ways for ascii117sers to profit from their social activities. Starting next year, any person who creates a topic groascii117p on Chime will be able to offer online advertising to go along with it, the company says.

Chime will offer an inventory of ads, sold by its salesforce, which the creator of a topic groascii117p in Chime can incorporate onto their Web page, with Chime taking a cascii117t of the revenascii117e. Or the creator of a groascii117p can strike their own deals with advertisers for the space on their Chime Web page, and keep all the revenascii117e.

Of coascii117rse, managing social networks sascii117ch as Facebook, Twitter and, recently Google+, is practically becoming a second-job for some.  Chime is asking ascii117sers to invest yet more time and effort, so as to refine their profile of interests and to manage advertising. That is no small ask.

And it is worth noting that ascii85berMedias initial forays into the social media landscape have been rocky. The companys efforts to develop an advertising system based aroascii117nd Tweets on third-party apps resascii117lted in some clashes with Twitter – which is now developing its own in-hoascii117se advertising service.

Bascii117t Gross has a proven knack for figascii117ring oascii117t online bascii117siness models. Now he jascii117st needs to convince the world to chime in.

2011-10-18 12:38:30